News

‘Fifth of crimes carried out may be unrecorded’

Report this comment

Fields marked with * are mandatory.

"Did anyone see the embarrassingly poor performance of Jeff Farrar on BBC news this morning. He really should be held to account for his role in deliberate under-recording of crime in Gwent when for a great part of that period he was deputy. He seems to want to side step any responsibility and in my view the PCC has made a huge error in appointing Farrar as chief. I wonder too whether anyone has thought of asking the previous chief to repay the bonus she took on the back of Force performance which has now turned out to be a complete lie. To anyone who cares, Napier and Farrar have been the worst chiefs the Force has had. Unfortunately, we are stuck with Farrar for some time now. I just hope he gets scrutinised to a far greater degree than at present. The public should be outraged."

Your name

Your email

Reason

Please note we will not accept reports with HTML tags or URLs in them.

HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, said: “The consequences of under-recording of crime are serious, and may mean victims and the community are failed because crimes are not investigated, the levels of crime will be wrongly under-stated, and police chiefs will lack the information they need to make sound decisions on the deployment of their resources.

“Although this is an interim report, and we have identified common strengths, we are seriously concerned at the picture which is emerging – particularly about the significant under-recording of crime, and serious sexual offences not being recorded.”

Recorded crime is used as the basis for official crime statistics from the Home Office – evidence of so-called under-recording could mean such statistics underplay how much crime actually takes place.

Promoted stories

Last year the Gwent PCC Ian Johnston threw doubt over Gwent crime statistics, saying police may not have recorded crime properly in a bid to lower figures. But earlier this month he seemed to drop his concerns when he said recently published statistics reflected actual crime.

HMIC estimated that if the findings for the first set of forces inspected are representative across all of them, 20 per cent of crime may be going unrecorded.

The inspection, which looked at how the Home Office Counting Rules and National Crime Recording Standard are applied, found there was weak or absent management of crime recording and a lack of a focus on the victim by the police when making crime-recording decisions.

It also found some offenders have been issued with out-of-court disposals when their offending history couldn’t justify it and when they should have been prosecuted.

But strengths identified included that when crime reports are recorded the classification of the offence is correct on almost every occasion.

In each force the HMIC looked at a sample of incidents to see if a crime should have been recorded and was. In Gwent it found within a sample of 60 crimes that should have been recorded, 52 were. A final HMIC report is due in October.

In response to the HMIC report, Chief Constable Jeff Farrar said he welcomed the report into crime data integrity in respect of Gwent Police.

He added: "Although it shows there is still more to be done to raise standards and achieve greater national consistency, I am pleased that the Inspectors have found that nearly 9 out of every 10 crimes inspected were recorded in accordance with national rules and that we are above the national average in this regard.

Gwent PCC Ian Johnston, responding to the report said he believed the public in Gwent can have confidence in the direction that the Gwent force is taking.

He added: "The Chief Constable has provided strong leadership and made it clear to everyone in the force that ethical and accurate crime recording is essential if the public are to have confidence in the figures. It was important to me that this independent inspection by HMIC confirmed many of the findings of our own internal review conducted last year."

Ipsoregulated

This website and associated newspapers adhere to the Independent Press Standardards Organisations's Editors' Code of Practice. If you have a compaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then please contact the editor here. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact IPSO here